Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday October 05, 2015 @06:32PM
from the least-of-two-evils dept.

derekmead writes: A study published today in Current Biology shows that wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is actually more abundant than it was before the disaster. According to the authors, led by Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith, the recovery is due to the removal of the single biggest pressure on wildlife—humans. "The wildlife at Chernobyl is very likely better than it was before the accident, not because radiation is good for animals, but because human occupation is much worse,” Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith says. “We were trying to emphasize that this study is a remarkable illustration of an obvious, but important message,” he said. “It is ordinary human habitation and use (farming, forestry, hunting) of land which does most ecological damage.”

There are a couple of interesting documentaries on the subject. PBS did Radioactive Wolves and another is Chernobyl Wolfpack from National Geographic. The PBS production is actually quite well done. The second isn't bad but it's not my favorite. They make for interesting viewing for those who are interested. I believe they can both be found on YouTube.

The message is that the real risk of radioactive exposure has been greatly overblown. What is happening (or not happening ) in the Chernobly area is only a surprise to those who believe the anti nuke agenda driven FUD.

Well, there *is* evidence, but it's hardly conclusive. And how do you rate bacteria?

OTOH, IIRC there's evidence that rats preferentially avoid areas high in radiation, so perhaps the evidence that exists needs to have behavioral changes factored into it (unless you want to consider that a part of how they avoid damage).

Yes, the effects show up sooner. This means they are more quickly eliminated from the genepool, so theoretically it makes sense.

OTOH, when last I visited the topic the evidence was quite weak. So what I'm talking about is science that's probably 40 years old, and wasn't strong then. Is there anything more recent?

Yes, but if you're talking about a species survival in an environment, then cleaning the damage out quick, e.g. via failure to reproduce, should benefit changes of survival. You need to distinguish between the ability of a species to survive in an environment and the ability of an individual. With a greater proportion of the damaged individuals being weeded out every year a higher rate of genetic damage per unit time should be sustainable by the species. This is, of course, going to be quite unpleasant f

It seems that animals living their whole life within the immediate environment of Chernobyl fare much better than for instance migratory birds. While there seem to be no increased gene defects in the local wolfpacks, with migratory birds raising their young in the Chernobyl area, we see heightened gene defects.

So the jury is still out there. Maybe living from craddle to grave in Chernobyl will be ok, but appearently living abroad and returning once in a while will not.

Don't be a moron. What you're, almost for sure, referencing is the unfortunate but necessary culling of large wildlife populations in relative urban areas where natural predators no longer exist. That is a very fringe political issue that doesn't need to be trolled through this discussion. Although, I did bite.

Highly inaccurate statement. For one, the excuse for the annexation of Crimea was to protect the majority Russian population against the hegemony of the nationalist Ukrainian government. Likewise, there is a big campaign in support of East Ukraine rebels specifically because they fight for the cause of protecting ethnic Russians and their rights. Russians have always supported and still support Serbians in whatever ethnic and territorial disputes the

what are you babbling about? are you trying to support the lame excuses of a neoimperial mafia country?

georgia, ukraine: invaded because they were neighboring weak countries. and russia just takes territory from them. it's living in 1815. the lame ass bullshit excuses for the thugging don't mean one fucking thing, except as a barometer of how many people are ignorant gullible retards who will believe lies

but russia is failing. it exercises it's military muscle because it is all it has left. but tanks rust,

Bikini atoll, devastated by a nuclear blast is in great shape, thanks mainly to the lack of people :http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3339485/Marine-life-flourishes-at-Bikini-Atoll-test-site.htmlAnd certainly in much better conditions compared to Indonesia or the Philippines reefs with no radiation and huge populations.

Another example is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, apparently with great wildlife. Again, because of the lack ofpeople.

In the rest of the world, while the human population has doubled from 3.5 B to 7B in only 40years, the wildlife (both marine and non) has halved :http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26290-worlds-wildlife-population-halved-in-just-40-years.htmlhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-16/half-marine-life-lost-in-40-years/6779912

Even the relatively protected Great Barrier Reef has halved its cover in 27 years :http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Full-PNAS-paper-for-publication.pdf

There is some uncertainty about the extinction of North American megafauna. Human migrations to North America tended to occur during climate change, so which was the cause and with the effect of human migration and of extinction is a fascinating question.

The destruction of the Nazca native American civilization due to overfarming and damming of rivers for agricultural control, coupled with unexpected floods, is very convincing.

The american indians managed the land and it's resources just fine, It's the assholes from europe that wiped out most everything because of stupidity.

They didn't manage the land and its resources. They lived a nomadic lifestyle. Once they'd depleted an area of its resources, they simply picked up everything and moved somewhere else. This had the effect of distributing their environmental impact.

That only works so long as population density is very low. Europeans arrived with a much higher population density. They would've had the same detrimental effect on the North American environment even if they'd lived as the native Americans did.

They didn't manage the land and its resources. They lived a nomadic lifestyle. Once they'd depleted an area of its resources, they simply picked up everything and moved somewhere else.

Who told you that? Because they lied to you. First, there was substantial variation in lifestyle. Second, they didn't just deplete an area and then move. They practiced land management, and they had the land portioned up into different groups' territories. In the west, they lived in relative stasis, and in the same places, for over ten thousand years. They successfully managed forests (with yearly controlled burns), oyster beds (by not overcollecting from them) and fish stocks (by not overfishing.) Their yearly burns kept the oaks and redwoods healthy, by clearing the understory. The oaks provided more food than they could eat every year. Then whitey arrived, in the form of Andrew Kelsey [wikipedia.org], who enslaved, raped, and murdered the locals. Some of them understandably got upset and killed him. Then we sent the US 1st Cavalry up here to murder all the Pomo on Bo-no-po-ti, aka "Island Village". Literally only one girl survived, hiding in the reeds while the lake went red with blood. Later, the federal government paid the locals $1/tree to plant black walnuts, as motivation to chop down the oaks upon which the natives depended for food, oaks in healthy forests that they had maintained literally for millenia. The walnuts were never financially beneficial to the area, and few remain today.

In the Midwest, the natives deliberately burned forests to create more range land for the bison. The bison then maintained the land in a state suitable for their use, which left the bison suitable for the use of the natives. The natives would follow the bison herds, since that was their primary source of all things.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the natives of the East.

Now, to be fair, if you go down and check out the natives of Mexico, they were eating one another, and they deforested the shit out of their land and they ran out of food and they migrated or they died. But up here in North America, the natives most certainly did practice sustainable land management.

Europeans arrived with a much higher population density. They would've had the same detrimental effect on the North American environment even if they'd lived as the native Americans did.

We'll never know, because they didn't even try. They did the opposite. They deliberately destroyed the lifestyle of the natives. They killed all the bison, a free renewable resource, so that they could carve the land up into fenced portions that someday, nobody would want to live on anyway. Seriously, do you think they would have killed the bison if they knew that someday all that territory would be known as "the flyover states", just a bunch of shitholes with poor civil rights? And they deforested the shit out of the west so that they could run cattle here! All they had to do to have more cattle than we could use was not kill all the bison at once.

There is some truth in parts of what you say but its still a highly biased view point. Firstly the relatively small size of the Native American population made all that land management easy.

When your numbers are that small you don't have all kinds of problems you do with larger populations. Simply burying your shit works when you only have a handful of people living on a large acreage. That does not hold up when your numbers get much larger.

There is some truth in parts of what you say but its still a highly biased view point. Firstly the relatively small size of the Native American population made all that land management easy.

Before the Spanish showed up with many fun new diseases, their population was up to at least 50 million, if not 100 million or more. It was smaller than what we have now, but not as small as people think.

Simply burying your shit works when you only have a handful of people living on a large acreage. That does not hold up when your numbers get much larger.

If they get much larger you have to actively compost the crap, sure.

"The flyover states" are also "America's bread basket" they are not empty.

Actually, most of the food comes from California.

They do have a good deal of forest, more than they once did

Forested area is nice, but forest biomass is what really matters, because old trees fix more carbon (and so on) than new trees covering the same area.

The rest of space is very much being used to group the wheat and corn that went into your breakfast cereal this morning.

The american indians managed the land and it's resources just fine, It's the assholes from europe that wiped out most everything because of stupidity.

This is a myth. Every population, human or otherwise expands until it can no longer support itself (or is killed off by higher predators). The "Europeans" were just more developed and hence could expand into the vast American continent much faster. Easter Island serves as a perfect example of primitive humans falling foul of poor environmental management.

"Sheppard Krech III's book The Ecological Indian sets out to probe the basis and historical validity of the idea that people of native descent are, and always have been, caring towards the environment, a characteristic commonly claimed by or attributed to them. With a series of empirical case studies he investigates whether their ideas and actions were always those of ecologists and conservationists. He finds that the Ecological Indian proposition

They weighed on average 900 kilograms - basically 2000 lbs. The largest of them were over 12 feet tall. - more than twice my height. They could reach up and grab things 14 ft above the ground. They could run over 40 mph. On all fours, were still taller than men.

They ate meat. Humans are made of meat.

Humans lived in the same place as the Short Nosed Bear. Humans that didn't have bows and arrows, let alone guns. Just spears. With rock points.

Humans probably didn't intentionally kill the S.N.B. - we just killed all it's food, and let them starve.

Humans: The most terrifying killing machine Earth has ever seen. Nothing is worse than a human.

As agent Smith said, I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not.

Cool quote bro, but in reality lots of mammal species don't live in equilibrium with their environment. They just die off a lot when the food goes away. Which is what humans do too when that happens. BUT humans are unusual in being able to radically alter their environments through agriculture and urbanization to allow many more humans to survive.

Never been around herd animals, I see. And yes, I can see a case for thinking of this many humans in terms of herd animals.

But really every animal does stuff along these lines. I think it's foolish to think that any other animal carrying out a technological civilization with radical abilities to manipulate their environment won't sooner or later run into these problems.

A couple of books on the subject of humans and life on Earth. Ishmael, My Ishmael and The Story of B. by Daniel Quinn. I doubt humans will destroy life on Earth, but I am pretty sure we humans will destroy ourselves.

And animals don't have the mental capacity to understand how radionuclides will affect their offspring, that's still human created toxicity.

These animals are as likely to be exposed to radionuclide contamination by eating the local plant life as humans are. Since animals live vastly shorter lifespans than humans there is less time for cancers to manifest it's effects on the animals.

I doubt eating these animals would be a good idea however it would be very interesting to examine just how much radionucli

Words are just words. If you think humans are overcrowded and are killing off the wildlife, then set a good example and make that ultimate sacrifice for nature. Perhaps others will follow your example.

Could it also be that animals just have shorter generations and the first few generations did poorly ( I remember reading stories about badly mutated animals) but ultimately radiation is just a selective pressure so after 30 generations, those that do well in radiation have come to dominate the population. Because their generations are one year long, they don't die from the effects of radiation before the ones who are doing better can reproduce. It would be hard for humans to survive 18 years to reproduc

From the earliest post-Chernobyl studies, things have been showing a healthier ecosystem in the area, with the primary change being fewer humans.

Alas for the anti-nuke hysterics, the main thing all that EVIL!!! radiation (properly radioactivity) has done has been...next to nothing. What really makes the place special is the laws forbidding humans from living in the area.

Note also that humans STILL live in the area illegally. And there's no real sign of meaningful biological effects among those humans ei

Three Mile Island was 1979 and Chernobyl was 1986. Don't you think technology has advances in 30 years. Even Fukushima is minor compared to the number of people killed by emissions from coal plants. The difference is when nuclear goes bad the damage can be very big. People get used to a few thousand extra people dying every month due to coal plant emissions.

While Fukushima was the latest accident, I always like to point out that the Fukushima plant is actually older than TMI, by at least by a few months, depending on how you measure it - do you start the time when construction started, or when criticality was first achieved?

Modern, actual modern nuclear plants would be far safer.

And yes, Coal power kills more people any given day than Nuclear does all decade.

I'd really like to see a high-efficiency high temperature molten salt thorium reactor deployed.

While Fukushima was the latest accident, I always like to point out that the Fukushima plant is actually older than TMI, by at least by a few months, depending on how you measure it - do you start the time when construction started, or when criticality was first achieved?

When construction started. More precisely when the design was finished. The nature of a NPP means that it is close to impossible to retrofit any technological advances into them because a lot of the technology is in the way the plant is arranged and constructed.

One exception is I am seeing some interesting developments in nano level enhancements to coolants for the primary cooling loop however these appear to favor extending the existing lifespans of existing reactors.

The usual, mean time between expected accidents, radiation releases, etc... We're talking about an order of magnitude or two longer times.

By some ironic quirk TMI *is* one of the safest designs because it was designed to be resistant to aircraft impacts

Actually, it wasn't. It's just a quirk that a giant concrete pressure dome like what the USA and the rest of the sane world puts around nuclear reactors happens to sneer at plane impacts.

Coal and Nuclear are as bad as each other but for different reasons. Nuclear kills people for subsequent decades as the radioactive effluents make their way through our water and food supply, it also reduces the birth rate because pregnancies fail to come to full term. The key thing is it happens very slowly and the majority of effects are still years away as opposed to coal whose effects are almost instantaneous in comparison.

"radioactive effluents"? You do realize that nuclear reactors don't release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions? Major releases are on the order of once a decade or more, and that's with our aging GenII reactors, world wide. GenIII would be a lot safer.

Also, citation on the birth rates. Citation on "majority of effects" being still years away - if anything we should be recovering from the effects of post WWII above ground nuclear bomb tests.

From my understanding of this technology it's spent fuel product is 233 Thallium, IIRC, which is characterized by many daughter products with short half lives. I'm not saying it isn't better reactor technology however it would seem the central issue of current reactor technology, the long term storage of spent fuel products, is an issue for thorium reactor technology as well.

Question, do you know what "short half lives" amounts to? It means that the material in question is much more radioactive - but that means it also decays in radioactivity much faster. Something with a half-life of 10 days will be virtually entirely gone within a year. Something with a half-life in the decades will still be churning a century from now, but it's initially safer to be around.(Safer being a relative quality).

Until we have effective, geologically stable and appropriate spent fuel containment facilities then we will always have higher levels of risk with greater levels of impact as a result of accidents in the nuclear industry. For that reason it's important to reduce that level of risk and impact to the community regardless of what reactor technology is deployed.

Above ground caskets are working well. I figure that we'd be digging up anything we bury within a century to reprocess it anyways. Heck, let it sit in a cask for 40 years and so much of the 'hot' stuff has decayed that it should make reprocessing significantly cheaper.

Coal and Nuclear are as bad as each other but for different reasons. Nuclear kills people for subsequent decades as the radioactive effluents make their way through our water and food supply, it also reduces the birth rate because pregnancies fail to come to full term. The key thing is it happens very slowly and the majority of effects are still years away as opposed to coal whose effects are almost instantaneous in comparison.

"radioactive effluents"? You do realize that nuclear reactors don't release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions? Major releases are on the order of once a decade or more, and that's with our aging GenII reactors, world wide. GenIII would be a lot safer.

Also, citation on the birth rates. Citation on "majority of effects" being still years away - if anything we should be recovering from the effects of post WWII above ground nuclear bomb tests.

I would think the GP refers to the effluents released in an nuclear accident, no?

From my understanding of this technology it's spent fuel product is 233 Thallium, IIRC, which is characterized by many daughter products with short half lives. I'm not saying it isn't better reactor technology however it would seem the central issue of current reactor technology, the long term storage of spent fuel products, is an issue for thorium reactor technology as well.

Question, do you know what "short half lives" amounts to? It means that the material in question is much more radioactive - but that means it also decays in radioactivity much faster. Something with a half-life of 10 days will be virtually entirely gone within a year. Something with a half-life in the decades will still be churning a century from now, but it's initially safer to be around.(Safer being a relative quality).

But he said: daugther products with short half life. That implies (I think) that it decays (slowly over years and years) into short lived, highly radioactive daugther products. Which implies (again: I think) a fairly high level of radiation over a long period of time.

Until we have effective, geologically stable and appropriate spent fuel containment facilities then we will always have higher levels of risk with greater levels of impact as a result of accidents in the nuclear industry. For that reason it's important to reduce that level of risk and impact to the community regardless of what reactor technology is deployed.

Above ground caskets are working well. I figure that we'd be digging up anything we bury within a century to reprocess it anyways. Heck, let it sit in a cask for 40 years and so much of the 'hot' stuff has decayed that it should make reprocessing significantly cheaper.

Indeed. I tend to agree with you that storage under ground is pretty useless since you will have to monitor it systematically to check that the caskets are still o

Monitoring is cheap on the plant grounds, and the casks probably cost less than shipping them to a different location. At the scales and price ranges we're looking at, concrete basically rounds to 'free'.

Well you've raised a lot of interesting stuff there Firethorn however I don't see how it relates. First you are talking about GenIII's and AP-1000, then you are saying thorium reactors, then you talk of reprocessing. Reprocessing, plutonium (spent reactor fuel) presumably. It's three different types of technology, so I get a general sense you are talking about future technologies.

So I'll just point out that I'm not against the idea of Nuclear power, I support it's development, I am for fixing it's problem

First you are talking about GenIII's and AP-1000, then you are saying thorium reactors, then you talk of reprocessing.

That's because there's different issues at play. I'm not a 'one true power' believer, so in a non-hydrocarbon fueled world, my benchmark is around 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, and 20% 'everything else'.

I'm also not a 'one true' believer in the 'solution' for nuclear power. IE there's space for GenIII reactors such as the AP1000 to run alongside reactors that are more theoretical at this point, providing incentive to recycle current nuclear waste.

The usual, mean time between expected accidents, radiation releases, etc... We're talking about an order of magnitude or two longer times.

Well the AP1000 is the only approved design and my understanding of that design doesn't lead me to that conclusion.
Safer reactor designs are already available, the features aren't implemented in AP-1000 because they are too expensive so the AP-1000's design still falls short. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reac

Well the AP1000 is the only approved design and my understanding of that design doesn't lead me to that conclusion. Safer reactor designs are already available, the features aren't implemented in AP-1000 because they are too expensive so the AP-1000's design still falls short. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reactor are split into four (main) operational divisions (and the reactor containment). An accident, failure or maintenance in the other areas can be mitigated by the other divisions. It's planning, and being prepared for, problems.

You know, it's odd, I searched my posts multiple times and didn't find the AP1000 listed? I didn't even mention GenIII.First: I was pretty much talking globally in my posts, thus the NRC could be considered a 'local' issue.Second: More designs can gain approval.

AP1000 vs EPR: Per wiki the AP1000 has a core damage frequency of 5.09e-7 per plant years, EPR is rated at 6.1e-7 per plant year. So by that metric they're both neck and neck (e-7), with the AP1000 having a slight lead over the EPR. The EPR is

1. AP1000 = Gen3, Gen3 != AP1000, though good catch, I did say gen3. Though I'll note that was in a different reply chain.

That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.

No, they don't. Venting steam(from the primary loop) is an Emergency event [yahoo.com]. Citation that they actually vent that often, not that they are merely 'allowed' to. I've searched, and it's not mentioned that I found.

You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?

What I do depends on the qualities of the citations. For example, you haven't provided a source that says NPPs actually vent radioisotopes every two weeks, merely that they

You have to read the GDC to understand why the regulations are in place. They exist for a reason and sometimes you have to go and research things yourself to gain the knowledge. For example, you might download EPA data and query it to find out something about the Nuclear Industries CFC emissions. The data is available, it just isn't packaged and you have to be prepared to do the work yourself.

You do realize that this is basically what asking for a citation means, right? You can't just say 'go find it yourself'. If you write a scientific paper, you'd cite the paper and page you got the information from. You make an assertions, you might be asked to back it up. I'm actually fine with backing my assertions up, at least when I have time.

Still, on emissions - there's a difference between what you wrote, along the lines of 'allowed to release radioactive gasses every two weeks', which implies that

You do realize that this is basically what asking for a citation means, right? You can't just say 'go find it yourself'. If you write a scientific paper, you'd cite the paper and page you got the information from.

Aside for having provided citations and evidence to support my claims, that is not what I am talking about. Specifically, what I mean is, sometimes you have to do your own research and capture the supporting evidence, for example uncovering what the semantics of reactor operations are, not just h

Question, do you know what "short half lives" amounts to? It means that the material in question is much more radioactive - but that means it also decays in radioactivity much faster.

Yes I do, but like the issue of the thermal containment, that is not what I am refering to. Thallium has some unusual properties (oh, I checked and it's 208 Thallium not 233. It's a gamma emmitter, not a alpha emmiter like 239 pu - so it's pretty nasty stuff). I'm still trying to wrap my head around it so if you have any facts

It's the gamma radiation that makes it less of a proliferation risk. Can't have detonators around that.

As for the radioactivity, yes, it's highly radioactive, but properly processed the waste is in said highly radioactive state for a substantially shorter period of time. Basically, it'll reach background levels in a period shorter than human civilization, not longer.

I'm fine with going with IFR, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'loose energy' (lose energy) for mining and processing Thorium - Thorium is c

As for the radioactivity, yes, it's highly radioactive, but properly processed the waste is in said highly radioactive state for a substantially shorter period of time. Basically, it'll reach background levels in a period shorter than human civilization, not longer.

Citations please, there are a whole lot of assumptions there that are already inconsistent with what I know so far. 208 Thallium has some very unusual properties in it's decay cycle that I am still learning about so if you have actual fact th

Above ground caskets are working well. I figure that we'd be digging up anything we bury within a century to reprocess it anyways. Heck, let it sit in a cask for 40 years and so much of the 'hot' stuff has decayed that it should make reprocessing significantly cheaper.

I think I see where you are going with this. If you are going to take a longer term veiw of the Nuclear Industry based on reprocessing and start implementing reactors that implement this technology then you have to accomodate reprocessing

As noted in the title, the panic caused by the mass evacuations etc (e.g. moving people from hospitals) may have caused 1500 deaths.

I remember reading something a few years ago, can't remember the author, maybe it was Michael Crichton. He said he was researching a book about the most massive terrorist-type events in history, and when he looked closer, found there actually were none. People are afraid of such things even though they don't ever really happen. Even the worst events only killed a few hundred people which wasn't enough to base a story around.
Take 9/11, the original event only killed about 500 people. the rest died from poo

No the difference is the damage from operating coal and hydrocarbon fuel plants is spread over a large geographic area (diffused in the atmosphere) and period of time. Individuals, societies, and ecosystems are generally able to cope with and absorb those impacts.

What is missed is the concentrated calamities that are oil spills, tail pound leaks, ash spills etc. Those are also consequences of traditional generation even if indirectly.

The funny thing about Chernobyl is that future generations of hippies will probably be grateful that it happened. By removing humans from the area, it has guaranteed a sanctuary for nature for at least 10000 years. There aren't many places like that left anywhere on our planet.

The Americans did it right - TMI released practically nothing into the atmosphere; you get more natural radiation from the natural stones by standing in the entry hall of the United Nations building than you'd have gotten standing next to TMI.

TMI suffered an endogenous problem, not an external insult. The two cases aren't comparable, but if I were comparing them I'd rate TMI as worse, because it caused problems with far less provocation. And I've no reason to believe that it would have caused less damage if inundated by an earthquake followed by a tsunami.

Yep. TMI released more than 500 degrees magnitude more radiation than Chernobyl. The Soviet reactor system was basically fail-safe while the American design was rushed into production and is still leaving countless victims in its wake.

Umn... You are aware that the Fukushima earthquake was well off shore aren't you? That was why it was followed by the large tsunami. And there isn't a place on earth that isn't subject to earthquakes. Some place are more likely to experience damage from them, but no place is safe. One of the largest quakes in US history happened in Missouri, but quakes can happen even in the middle of plates. And some of those are worse than most that happen along the edges.

Finding Fukushima victims with radiation sickness is easy. Most of the workers after the incident suffered at least mild radiation sickness. They don't, however, match the rhetoric of the g.p. Most of them probably only have in increased probability of cancer.

No. Getting acute radiation sickness is HARD. You have to really work to get it, even in cases of nuclear contamination. The first acute radiation sickness symptoms happen at around 1 Sievert. For comparison, the US lifetime irradiation limit for nuclear power plant workers is 0.2 Sv and two of the most irradiated worker in Fukushima received around that dose (though localized near their ankles) - and this is still 5 times less than the low threshold for acute effects.

You can talk about clean energy and cost savings/penny pinching all you want (the republican argument), but are *you* willing to talk face-to-face to the families of the victims of these incidents when they occur and explain why Nuclear energy was the right choice while their relatives skin is melting off their bodies?

I'll gladly do that, provided you talk face-to-face to the families of all the people dying of coal-induced lung cancer, and explain why we did the right thing by burning more coal instead of

but are *you* willing to talk face-to-face to the families of the victims of these incidents when they occur and explain why Nuclear energy was the right choice while their relatives skin is melting off their bodies?

I'll just note here that no one has had to do that yet due to the (no doubt peculiar) lack of victims with melting skin, So I doubt I'd have to leave my fortress of solitude the next time a TMI or Fukushima happens due to the continued absence of skin melting.

wind and solar are still extremely diffuse, and the collection hardware has a large ecological footprint.

Bullshit. Wind has a minuscule ecological footprint; you put it on grazing land. Solar as well; you just put it on some crappy land that's not producing any benefit. And solar has the benefit that it reflects some of the light that would normally strike the ground, and it also absorbs and then reradiates as IR even more. More than half of that is reradiated upwards (because solar panels are white on their back sides) so solar panels reduce heating of the land and thus insolation-forced warming.

Not only the vast swaths of land permanently occupied, but the access roads and transmission lines.